Hand in Hand

The Hand in Hand Plan (HIH) is the largest privately funded ECCD (Early Childhood Care and Development) program in China. It builds child-friendly kindergartens and ECCD centers in 24 impoverished counties. Additionally, it trains teachers, parents, and healthcare workers to spread ECCD knowledge and best practices.

Location Data

The Hand in Hand (HIH) program has four implementation phases. In each phase the program is implemented simultaneously in 6 highly impoverished counties. The program has two components – early childhood care for children aged 0-3 and early childhood education for children aged 3-6.

Early Childhood Care

To ensure the healthy growth of children aged 0-3, parents and healthcare workers are educated about infant care and child nutrition through a Training of Trainers (TOT) model. In each county, 6 healthcare workers and 6 parents are selected to receive training in Shanghai or Beijing. With an expert’s help in the development of a training plan, these participants then become master trainers responsible for spreading ECCD knowledge and best practices back within their own community. Awareness and guidance materials are also distributed throughout the community via radio and television.

Early Childhood Education

To transform children aged 3 to 6’s learning experience, the project selects a village in each county in which to build an exemplary “child-friendly” kindergarten. Experts from university partners help design small-size classrooms, child-friendly toilets, localized dietary plans, as well as functional spaces including arts rooms and playgrounds to ensure a more participatory, holistic learning experience for children. The design and management of the kindergarten also serve as models to be emulated elsewhere. For kindergartens that already exist in the county, HIH also distributes an “ECCD resource kit” that includes painting materials, toys, keyboards and so on to promote more child-friendly pedagogy in the classroom.

A similar teacher-training model is also designed so that after receiving training from experts, the master teachers in turn train teachers not only from the exemplary kindergarten, but also the approximately 300 kindergarten teachers throughout the whole county. The trainers and experts are also connected through QQ – a popular instant messaging software to facilitate frequent peer-learning.

Bridge International Academies is a large-scale chain of low-cost private schools that uses a technology-enabled approach to provide standardized primary education through its “Academy in a box” model, allowing the chain to scale quickly and keep costs low.Kenya

Related Research & Evidence

This paper presents preliminary findings from the school survey carried out in 227 schools in Andhra Pradesh during the school year 2010;11 as part of the Young Lives study. It looks at the factors that contribute to better functioning and performance of primary schools. This is in the context of rising enrollment among 6 to 14 year-olds in India in the wake of the Right to Education Act, and the steady increase in the number of private schools across the whole of India since 2006.